Gonca Paşolar, co-founder and partner of EAA- Emre Arolat Architecture, keynote speaker at SHARE Tirana 2020

SHARE Tirana 2020 – A visionary approach to the future of architecture!

We’re getting ready for the launch of the 3rd edition of SHARE Tirana 2020. Themed “a visionary approach to the future of architecture”, this year’s event will bring renowned speakers on the SHARE stage who will cover insightful speeches, debates, and award-winning architectural projects. We anticipate that over 350 architects, engineers, and industry shapers will be joining us at SHARE Tirana 2020. Have a closer look at the main event highlights:

• 40+ lectures and presentations: Main SHARE Sage & Innovation Stage
• SHARE Future Projects Awards: a live competition dedicate to future Albanian architectural projects
• An innovative exhibition of architectural solutions, products & service
• Thematics: Interior Architecture, Design&Furniture, Lighting Design, Facades, Roofs, Insulation, Landscape
• International debate: “Transforming the world through architecture”

Get your delegate pass at SHARE Tirana 2020! 

Meet Arch. Gonca Paşolar, co-founder and partner of EAA- Emre Arolat Architecture

Gonca Paşolar, co-founder and partner of EAA- Emre Arolat Architecture is one of the keynote speakers that will take part in the SHARE Tirana 2020 Forum. Born in Switzerland, she finished her studies at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara. She and Emre Arolat formed their own practice in Istanbul as EAA- Emre Arolat Architecture during 2004. Her presence and a strong spirit are sensed in EAA through the exhibitions and the worldwide lectures, in addition to her jury duties in a large number of international and national competitions.

Through her almost 20-year-old career, ms. Pasolar won many prestigious awards, among which European’s Center for Architecture 40 under 40 awards in 2010, for outstanding performance in Architecture and Design and a nomination for AJ’s Women Architects of the Year Award in 2015. Her surprising realisations guided her to become Managing Partner of EEA, a position she currently holds for practice for the New York, Istanbul and London offices. In 2017, Pasolar and Arolat were the Norman R.Foster Visiting Professors at the Yale School of Architecture.

What guides the office way of designing and also ms. Pasolar is the concept of dealing with the context. She stated during an interview that the typology of the project it’s only a repercussion of the context and that their main focus is to state the exact project for the certain space. The Sancaklar Mosque is the best example in this direction, acclaimed as Building of the year 2015. With an is of 700 meters, this mosque stands out very different from the typical architectural current of a religious space of this nature.

The Building is located below this canopy and can be accessed from a path from the upper courtyard through the park. The building blends in completely with the topography and the outside world is left behind as one moves through the landscape, down the hill and in between the walls to enter the mosque. The interior of the mosque, a simple cave-like space, becomes a dramatic and awe-inspiring place to pray and be alone with God. The project constantly plays off of the tension between human-made and natural.

© Thomas Mayer

Thomas Mayer

Zorlu Center done in collaboration with Tabanlioglu Architects is also a fantastic example of understanding the context and contouring a pretext for the future building. Being situated just at the junction of the Bosphorus Bridge European connection and the glamorous Büyükdere axis that connects the city centre with the great business district Maslak, it’s the image of plasticizing the topography dynamics into architecture, having a shell that is transformed into an in-between layer fo the different functions combined in the complex.

Thomas Mayer

Another amazing building designed by them is situated nearby the Saint Peter’s Church in Antakya, that is claimed to have housed the first Christian congregation, the hotel is erected on a site of archaeological findings dating back to antiquity. The Museum Hotel Antakya pays homage to the fantastic mosaics, baths, piazzas discovered during the first drills of the site and draws on the tensioned relationship of Archaeology and Architecture by intertwining the ancient and the modern.

Studio Majo

Studio Majo

About SHARE Architects

SHARE Architects is a leading conference programme that brings together some of the finest architects, urban designers, and planners in Central Eastern Europe. Each of the 14 conferences organized by SHARE this 2020 will be an all-in-one, 1-day event, and it will include presentations and talks on all-things architecture-related and beyond.